


Five Reasons Captain Jack Harkness Doesn't Tell People He's Immortal

by osprey_archer



Category: Torchwood
Genre: 5 Things, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-28
Updated: 2012-05-28
Packaged: 2017-11-06 05:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/414962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jack tells people that he's immortal, bad things happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Reasons Captain Jack Harkness Doesn't Tell People He's Immortal

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Français available: [Cinq raisons pour lesquelles le capitaine Jack Harkness ne dit pas aux gens qu'il est immortel.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2334707) by [mnemosyne19](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnemosyne19/pseuds/mnemosyne19)



1.

“I don’t believe you,” said Flora, with an irritated flounce of her many, many petticoats. 

“I just blew my brains out and came back to life,” said Jack. “What’s not to believe?”

“I think it’s stage magic,” said Flora. “Papa always said you were a tricky one. I think you’re trying to put one over a poor, honest working girl.” 

“Here. Shoot me yourself,” said Jack, handing her the ivory-handled Colt revolver. 

Flora shot him without hesitation. 

That should have been a warning sign, but it wasn’t. Jack didn’t leave her when she beheaded him with pruning shears because he cheated on her, didn’t leave her when she spitted him like a goose for flirting with the telegraph boy, didn’t leave her when she drowned him in the wash tub because he got ash all over the clean whites.

But when she brained him with the frying pan for bringing home flour instead of cornmeal, Jack gave up and left. 

After the Great War, he had to hunt her down and have her hung for serial murder. Evidently she’d gotten a taste for killing. 

2\. 

“You could have been killed!” yelled Joshua. “It’s one thing to go over the top under orders, but going over without orders is just—just suicide!”

“I wanted to bring back Michael’s body.” 

“Which is brave and honorable of you, but we’d all rather have you alive than have both your and Michael’s corpses.”

Jack wasn’t shagging Josh (yet) but it pained him to see someone so gorgeous so upset. Plus, there was no way Joshua was a closet psychopath. “Josh,” he said. “I can’t die.” 

“All of us are immortal in Christ, but in flesh—”

“No,” said Jack. “I’m immortal in flesh. I can’t die.” 

Joshua scraped his hands through his curly black hair. “Jack,” he said. “Jack, Jack. I know it’s hard in the trenches, living constantly under threat of machine gun, but—”

Jack didn’t use a gun this time (too many people around); he stabbed himself with his camp knife instead. 

When he came to, Joshua was in catatonic shock. He ended up in a field hospital for weeks, and when they sent him back to the trenches he ran from the guns—and he ended up in front of a firing squad for cowardice. 

3\. 

“I love France,” May-Ann informed Jack over cocktails. “France, France is so awfully ripping. Better wine. Better everything.” She hiccupped. “I’m trying to cut back,” she said. “On alcohol. Only two flutes of champagne before breakfast. Have another martini?”

Jack had already had a baker’s dozen (not to mention five gibsons and a brandy Collins), but when a beautiful woman asked he couldn’t say no. 

Mary-Ann leaned forward, cleavage rippling below clacking yards of pearl necklaces. “Let me tell you a secret,” she whispered. “My brother Andy’s a moonshiner in the States.”

“Really?” whispered Jack, and hiccupped too. He should get drunk more often. “Get me a sidecar!” he called to the bartender. 

“He knows Al Capone,” she whispered, glancing around furtively, as if anyone could hear her over the sound of the jazz band. She leaned forward till her cheek rested on Jack’s shoulder. “Now tell me a secret.”

“I’m immortal,” whispered Jack, and hiccupped. 

Unfortunately she remembered that the next morning, and he had to demonstrate. She didn’t try to kill him and she didn’t go crazy, but she asked and asked and asked why he was immortal, and could he make her immortal too? 

Usually she was drunk when she asked, so no one paid attention—not even Jack, so he didn’t know that she had a Theory until that hot night in Monte Carlo (Jack was on vacation) when they drank half a dozen sazeracs and more gin fizzes than he could count and spent the evening shedding as many clothes as they could without being kicked out of the bar. 

“’s the coat,” she said. 

“It’s gin,” said Jack, with feeling.

“No, no, the coat’s is…why you’re not dead. Immortal,” she said. 

“No, no, no,” said Jack, and stumbled to his feet. “Want a piña colada?” 

When he got back with the piña coladas, she’d put on his coat and stabbed herself with his pocketknife. Her blood soaked into the sawdust floor and the broken piña colada pineapples and Jack’s shirtsleeves, because she died in his arms. 

4.

Maybe Jack found totally the total lack of morality a turn-on. Maybe he loved the zing of danger. Maybe he just had a thing for dark hair and blue eyes and tall shiny black boots. 

At any rate, Jack took up with Werner the SS man, who had a kinky uniform and a sexy accent and a terrifying certainty that he was going to die in the war and go to hell. 

“I’ve been with more men than you have and I’ve never been to hell,” said Jack, after Werner woke up from yet another nightmare. 

“I’ve going to hell for shooting people, dummkopf,” said Werner, picking at the death’s head on his SS cap. 

Jack had probably shot more people than Werner, too, and he’d still never been to hell. But Jack didn’t argue, because he didn’t want to say he was immortal; that only led to trouble.

Werner never would have known if the RAF hadn’t bombed Berlin and Jack hadn’t snapped in half under a falling beam, and come to life again before Werner’s eyes. 

Werner didn’t kill Jack or kill himself or go insane, and Jack thought everything would be all right. But then Werner got caught committing sodomy in an SS showers. He turned Jack over to the authorities rather than go to the camps himself. 

Josef Mengele loved Jack. If only Jack had an identical twin who Mengele could vivisect too (over and over again), the Angel of Death would have died of happiness. 

5\. 

“I saw your head get ripped off by a tree,” shouted Annette. “I was in the car, Jack, you had no head!” 

“We’d just had an accident,” said Jack. “Maybe you got a concussion?” 

Annette shook her head. “I’m a WAC, you jackass, I know how to stay calm in stressful situations, and you—had—no—head!” She started crying, one hand pressed to her face, one heel repeatedly kicking the jeep tire. 

So he told her. 

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” she asked, blowing her nose on a scarlet handkerchief. The handkerchief never showed lipstick stains. Annette was practical like that. 

He explained about May-Ann. He figured Flora was too gory, and she wouldn’t understand about Josh, and he tried not to remember Werner. 

“You loved another girl before me?” said Annette. 

“I’ve been around a long time, love,” said Jack. 

“You said you’d never loved anyone like you love me,” she said. 

“I loved the others in different ways,” said Jack. 

“You lied to me,” said Annette.

“I might have stretched things,” Jack said. “But—look at it this way—I’m the only guy I’ll ever meet who will really be able to love you forever!” 

But Annette grasped intuitively that “love you forever” only worked if forever was cut prematurely short. She got in the jeep and left Jack and reported him KIA. He had to find a new military identity right sharp, because Torchwood waits for no man.

And that’s how he became Captain Jack Harkness.


End file.
